Maria Giovanna Vagenas

Maria Giovanna Vagenas is a film critic, program consultant, and curator living in Paris and Athens. She studied philosophy and comparative literature in Genoa and Vienna and film studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. From 2008 to 2018, she served as program consultant at the Viennale. She has collaborated with various festivals and institutions, including the Berlinale, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Doha Film Institute, Fid Marseille, Cinéma Italien d'Annecy, Crossingeurope, and the Austrian Film Archive. Fluent in Greek, Italian, German, French, Spanish, and English, she regularly leads press conferences and public talks. Since 2018 she has served as programmer at Lugano’s Human Rights Film Festival, and her writings regularly appear on Senses of Cinema, The South China Morning Post, and various Greek and Italian online film magazines. Among the programs she’s curated are “The Rebellious Image, Cuban Newsreels” (Viennale 2016), “Napoli! Napoli! The New Neapolitan Cinema” (Viennale 2017), and “Cinema of the Islands” (Filmarchiv Austria-Metro Kino 2023).